Kathleen, Kage and the Company

Kage Baker was a firm proponent of the phrase “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

Nor was she a soft practitioner, one of those people who endeavours to make pleasant small talk when inside they are barely controlling the urge to Hulk out. You all know who they are, Dear Readers.They may be making eye contact over the coffee counter  or smiling as you discuss the World Series  amid cocktails: but a close look reveals that their pupils are pinpoints, their teeth are not revealed in a smile but merely bared, and you’re probably about to get your jugular ripped out.

These are folk unfit for human contact. Some people never come out of this state – they becomes professionally passive aggressive, or evolve into serial killers. But most of us just hit the unfortunate state from time to time, cope with it (badly), and ultimately sleep, walk, read or drink it off.

But Kage was right – it’s best not to try and talk. Eschew social contacts. Fort up. Quarantine yourself. With the last of your rational mind, fight back the nasty-tempered chimpanzee hiding in all our genomes, and slink into a cave for awhile. The thing to remember is that it goes away. If you can control yourself until it does, all will eventually be well. Or at least better. Or at the very least, different.

I am in just such a horrid state today. I keep checking the stages of grief, but evidently my soul has never heard of them and will have nothing to do with such a tidy progression of emotions. I’ve been definitely dancing with acceptance the last few months – and a lovely dancer he is, too – but suddenly, with summer on the very horizon, his hands full of plums and Bass Ale, I have slipped back into anger. Depression, too, but mostly anger.

I need one of those giant African rats trained to seek out buried land mines. He could run all about and tell me where the pockets of destruction are buried in my id. Then we could stand at the edges and throw rocks at them until they go off harmlessly …

Exploding something would be nice.

Anyway. I really do have nothing nice to say, but I’m not as much of a lady as Kage was: I just cannot keep my mouth shut. so I’m taking palliative steps. I had chocolate-covered marzipan for breakfast. There are fresh berries with dinner. The little black cat and Harry seem aware of the dangers, and are both clinging to me sweetly – she purrs and he sings, and they both snuggle.

I’m going to read something of Kage’s, I think. That’ll make me feel better; or at least confine me to somewhere I would rather be until it’s safe once more to walk abroad.

The rest of you, Dear Readers, have a nice night.

Kage Baker was a duty-oriented person. She took duty very seriously – especially if it was one you had taken on yourself of your own accord. She gave almost as much weight to  those less-satisfying responsibilities that just  …. attach to you, like whiny cockeburrs,  as you walk through life.

But she did her best to live up to all of hers. She didn’t stop working on stories until she shut her eyes for the last time. And that is meant literally: in the quieter moments of that last afternoon, which bubbled over with the loving chaos of friends and family, she dictated the framework of a last story to me. She was determined to see to it that I understood; determined to have my promise that all the things she told me would get written.

Kage wasn’t concerned about what happened go her or her goods. She assumed I would come up with something sensible for all that, and had already put the problems firmly behind her. No, she was just worried that I would forget a detail, or a plot, or drop a story somewhere I couldn’t reach it again. I was always losing things under the fridge or behind the couch, and I wouldn’t have her long arms to reach them out for me again …

It’s my duty and my joy to keep going. Nothing matters but the work, she whispers in my ear. And I believe it. For sure, nothing feels as good as the work does; nothing makes me feel more alive.

But, truth to tell, picking up her pen has been harder than I thought it would be. Even beyond the unavoidable problems caused by the general collapse of my health, sometimes it’s been really difficult to write her stories. Some days, all I manage to do is make notes and outlines, and I’m not always real happy even with those …

But, you know, I can’t imagine how anyone could take up this pastime cold, and be as fast and dexterous as Kage was.  She juggled razors and rainbows, and was left-handed besides – it takes time to learn those tricks. When I first sat down at her computer, all I could do was cry. Then I began to read her notes, and sift through them – it was still months before I sat down seriously to work on Nell Gwynne II. But it worked. And there are bits and pieces coming along in several conditions and places, now. I am confident they will see the light of day. It’s just more like pulling teeth that I expected …

Tor Books is asking after some of Kage’s older stories right now, for some sort of collection. When I have them satisfied there, I’ll see if I can interest them in something new.  There are some new things, mirabile dictu. They’ve grown slowly, in the dark and over the long days, like crystals in a cave. I don’t really have control of them yet, you know? But the ideas and the rhythms and the words are all coming together, as slowly as a rose blooms.

Today I’ve been so tired, I feel like I need to stick a bike pump in my ear and re-inflate myself. The comforting portal of the computer screen grew teeth around the edges earlier today, and snarled at me – I swear. So I retreated to the safety of my bed. Harry sang to me, and the little black cat came and slept wrapped protectively around my feet. My toes are safe from demons, at least.

I think a dull, hazy, unbearably beige sort of day just sucked all the strength right out of me. My duty was impossible to fulfill, short of life and devoid of joy. With joy, you can carry on with anything, you know – without it, all us aging caryatids just fall right over …

A night’s sleep and I will be myself again. I can pick up that damned stone and stand up straight again under the temple roof, and take joy in my duties. Nothing does matter but the work.

And nothing is as joyous.

Kage Baker was a duty-oriented person. She took duty very seriously – especially if it was one you had taken on yourself of your own accord. She gave almost as much weight to  those less-satisfying responsibilities that just  …. attach to you, like whiny cockeburrs,  as you walk through life.

But she did her best to live up to all of hers. She didn’t stop working on stories until she shut her eyes for the last time. And that is meant literally: in the quieter moments of that last afternoon, which bubbled over with the loving chaos of friends and family, she dictated the framework of a last story to me. She was determined to see to it that I understood; determined to have my promise that all the things she told me would get written.

Kage wasn’t concerned about what happened go her or her goods. She assumed I would come up with something sensible for all that, and had already put the problems firmly behind her. No, she was just worried that I would forget a detail, or a plot, or drop a story somewhere I couldn’t reach it again. I was always losing things under the fridge or behind the couch, and I wouldn’t have her long arms to reach them out for me again …

It’s my duty and my joy to keep going. Nothing matters but the work, she whispers in my ear. And I believe it. For sure, nothing feels as good as the work does; nothing makes me feel more alive.

But, truth to tell, picking up her pen has been harder than I thought it would be. Even beyond the unavoidable problems caused by the general collapse of my health, sometimes it’s been really difficult to write her stories. Some days, all I manage to do is make notes and outlines, and I’m not always real happy even with those …

But, you know, I can’t imagine how anyone could take up this pastime cold, and be as fast and dexterous as Kage was.  She juggled razors and rainbows, and was left-handed besides – it takes time to learn those tricks. When I first sat down at her computer, all I could do was cry. Then I began to read her notes, and sift through them – it was still months before I sat down seriously to work on Nell Gwynne II. But it worked. And there are bits and pieces coming along in several conditions and places, now. I am confident they will see the light of day. It’s just more like pulling teeth that I expected …

Tor Books is asking after some of Kage’s older stories right now, for some sort of collection. When I have them satisfied there, I’ll see if I can interest them in something new.  There are some new things, mirabile dictu. They’ve grown slowly, in the dark and over the long days, like crystals in a cave. I don’t really have control of them yet, you know? But the ideas and the rhythms and the words are all coming together, as slowly as a rose blooms.

Today I’ve been so tired, I feel like I need to stick a bike pump in my ear and re-inflate myself. The comforting portal of the computer screen grew teeth around the edges earlier today, and snarled at me – I swear. So I retreated to the safety of my bed. Harry sang to me, and the little black cat came and slept wrapped protectively around my feet. My toes are safe from demons, at least.

I think a dull, hazy, unbearably beige sort of day just sucked all the strength right out of me. My duty was impossible to fulfill, short of life and devoid of joy. With joy, you can carry on with anything, you know – without it, all us aging caryatids just fall right over …

A night’s sleep and I will be myself again. I can pick up that damned stone and stand up straight again under the temple roof, and take joy in my duties. Nothing does matter but the work.

And nothing is as joyous.

Kage Baker was born on June 10, 1952. Today she would have been 60. I’m not sure she would have liked that much, either, despite her Beatlemaniacal desire to make at least 64.

But if she’d beaten the cancer, she would have by now morphed into a lean, white-haired lady (she was working hard at it when she died), which would have delighted her. She always wanted to look like Granny Weatherwax when she got old; a notion that was bolstered by my own increasing resemblance to Nanny Ogg. We would have had the best Halloween costumes ever.

Paul Kidby, an artist whom Kage adored, has illustrated tons of Discworld stuff; one of his sketches is of a young Esme Weatherwax. It bears a startling resemblance to Kage … I tried to locate it in his work but failed, or I’d have a link here for you, Dear Readers, to see. I wouldn’t just post it, of course, because it’s original artwork and Kage would haunt me viciously were I to violate Kidby’s copyright so egregiously.

But she would have made a great Granny Weatherwax.

I’ve thought, since she died, that I would miss her more on her birthdays. Oddly, I don’t. There’s a kind of amazed peace in realizing that she’d by 60 today (and the suspicion she’d have complained about it), because – really, you know? Sixty! Man, how the hell does that happen? No, I miss her most in little things, ambushing me. A bit of news I want to share – a sudden scent that reminds me of her (you were right, as usual, Steven; sudden smells can be devastating) – an inspiration that is automatically followed by the thought that I must tell Kage. Those happen all the time, and continue to cut like razors.

But the constant soul-sucking pain of her absence has, yes, grown more tolerable – just as people told me it would. I’m grateful for that, too, I really am. There are times now when I go along quite happily for long periods of time; I felt guilty at first, but then I could hear Kage in my head, saying, “Don’t be stupid! You think I want a weeping boneless amoeba of grief for a memorial? Think again, kiddo. I want books.”

Well, there’s one so far, and there will another in the Fall. And there are a couple of anthologies coming along with her stories in them, too (details as I acquire them, Dear Readers.) And I will finish more. So Kage will have what she wanted. Specifically, what she wanted for me. That’s what has slowly dawned on me, and makes me miss her even more and feel guilty to boot. She told me to continue her work not for her own benefit – she was packed, ticket in hand, eager to step off the pier onto the deck of the waiting schooner: she wanted nothing for herself at the end. She wanted it for me.

I realized that when I saw the cover of Nell Gwynne II, and my name printed thereon below Kage’s. It was such a thrill.: a literal, visceral, predatory frisson of power and triumph.  And Kage knew it would be, too. We all wrote – madly, badly and incessantly – when we were kids; she was the one who kept it going and did something with it. When she told me to keep writing after she was gone, I wept and said I couldn’t. She told me I could and must.

“Because what I really want to do now,” she said, grinning, “is direct.”

I guess maturity does set in a little when you near 60. Maybe.

Happy Birthday, kiddo.

Kage Baker would, in the ordinary course of her life, by now be sneaking surreptitious glances at her birthday presents. Which would be in a pile on the mantlepiece or the living room table. If she were still in the ordinary course of her life.

It was our custom to put out our birthday presents the evening before the birthday in question. The recipient was allowed to look closely, to handle slightly, to even shake them a little. Kage loved the suspense – she loved guessing, and moaning in frustration that she’d have to wait, wondering what weirdness in packaging I might have contrived in order to disguise what she was getting.  (I did that a lot.) I also lied, prevaricated, and flat out refused to confirm even her best guesses.

That was the whole point, you see. And believe me, Kage remembered what she’d guessed the night before, and crowed with triumph at every guess that was subsequently revealed to be correct. She did love to win …

The stack would sit there and shimmer all evening, and then be happily despoiled in the morning. It was a tradition, originally engendered by Kage – because she so enjoyed the anticipation, the sure knowledge that something great was coming but not … quite … yet. It was the other side of patiently working to achieve her goals: the fun of knowing a good thing was guaranteed, but holding back from until she just couldn’t stand it any more!

Tomorrow would have been her birthday. And this is just the time of the evening when I would ordinarily disappear into my room, wrap her gits with the dubious assistance of Harry – parrots do not enhance a present-wrapping experience – and then tote out the goodies to torment and tempt her.

I wish I could tonight. I hope someone does it.

Kage Baker was fascinated by the movie Alien: the first one, the original one. The Ridley Scott on a roll one. She loved the cinemagraphic tricks and techniques in it, she loved the relentless tension and the layered philosophies she discerned in it. She loved the characterization, especially – imagine, writing a character whose portrayal was not gender-dependent!

She strove for that in many of her own characters. She was fascinated with writing a persona who could be played by anyone and not change. Lots of writers are and do, of course – but Alien was the story wherein Kage was first made aware of the idea, and she was enthralled.

And if you didn’t know already that the character of Ripley was intended to be male and then they cast Sigourney Weaver but changed not one iota of her scenes or lines: well, shame on you and now you do.

Anyway. The movie thrilled Kage (and me, too) and many of our friends, and hoards of people all over the world.  Some of us have been discussing it for the last 35 years. And it’s long-awaited, much mutated prequel Prometheus opens today in Los Angeles. I am going to see it, in the wonderful company of an old friend, Scott. He was a bright-eyed  brainy brat of a teenager when he and we used to sit in our living room until all hours discussing everything in the world (including Alien); in memory of that time, he is taking me to the movies today.

Now, of course, he is a big handsome bearded fellow with degrees in fascinating philosophies and arts, about to embark on a noble second career as a teacher; and I am a fat old lady trying to make a living as a writer. So, as you can see, despite the years we haven’t changed. We are not very different from the young and younger dreamers who debated the tau of breakfast cereals and whether vampires or werewolves were cooler; whether or not you could have fashion as a life style and whether the Trinity was One or Three: all those long years ago in the Hollywood Hills …

I’ll let you know how is all goes later, Dear Readers. Off to the ArcLight Theatre!

***Discontinuity***

And now I am home from seeing Prometheus; and, more importantly, seeing Scott. I also had the pleasure of finally meeting his partner, Miles; and two young friends of their along for the fun. Always take bright teenagers to the movies with you if you can arrange it, Dear Readers. Their clear eyes and undomesticated interpretations are a wonder and delight.

And it was wonderful to meet the man who makes my beloved Scott happy. Miles has a solemn Celtic dignity, the shadows of oak woods in his eyes. And his voice is deep and sweet, and if it could be bottled it would be a single malt whiskey of surpassing smooth excellence. Miles has the mien and voice of a bard.

We were all hoping for something bardic from Prometheus (note the nifty segue, there) but there were only the faintest echoes to be heard. Mine you, it is a good movie – I liked it, and will happily see it again. No one creates the physical mystery of the World Beyond The Fields We Know like Sir Ridley Scott; he brings tangible life to noir anything, whether it’s alien worlds or period drama or historical fiction.

But the film raises more questions than it answers. It’s not quite philosophically satisfying – and I expected it to be, since it is so clearly not just another CGI blow ’em up film. The CGI and the explosions are well done, but there is atmosphere and ambiance here as well – and they’re engrossing, but a little too murky for my tastes. Miles commented that a well-known dramatic device for implying sadness is to show people weeping – but that to indicate confusion in your characters by confusing your audience doesn’t work as well.

I think this lack of clarity can be pretty much laid at the door of the writer, Damon Lindelof. He’s one of the perpetrators of Lost. That may not have been the best choice for a film we all hoped would at least answer one or two questions, even if it did pose others … unless Sir Ridley has his heart set on another sequel. If that’s the case, he might want to trade up on screen writers, as otherwise he may end up with a string of chaotic stories in the classic but unfortunate mode of the tale told by the idiot.*

And the characters are rather flat. The best is very good indeed, but he’s not a human being … I will leave it there to let you guess.

However, the movie is no end of fun, the effects are amazing, and the editing and cinematography are nerve-wrackingly suspenseful. I happen to have seen it in 3-D: the first 3-D I have seen since watching cartoons as a small child, and man – has that improved! Despite what must have been great temptation, Sir Ridley saves the truly visceral effects of a  face-hugger’s 3-D tentacle headed for your personal face for somewhere near the end …

I had a wonderful time. The discussion of what it all means was fun on the way home, too. And Kage would have loved it.

Thanks, Scott. It made my day.

*Full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing.

Kage Baker used to wryly paraphrase that old saw about the weather into Don’t like the world? Invent a new one.

Easier said than done, unless you were her. Kage could not only do it – sometimes on a moment’s notice, as we rolled down some road – she could both people and inhabit it by sheer force of will. A few minutes of thought, a soliloquy or two about some weird founder or eldritch folk custom, and she’d be off. Within a few miles I’d either be yelling for her to stop (because it was simply too weird and gave me the heebie-jeebies) or she’d be making notes for a new story. Sometimes both.

Today, the world did not please me much. Too hot, too smoggy, the sky over the basin not only greyed out with left over fog but regularly violated by noisy Navy helicoptors. I’m glad the President likes to come here, but I live under a main helicopter route, and it gets to be a drag when they fly over making the windows shake and the dogs howl for the 6th time in a day.

The news is full of political hatred, lies and rage; people I care about keep dying. That serves to remind me about all the people I don’t even know who are also doubtless kicking the old jam jar (as Kage liked to phrase it) and that is just depressing. I’ve been spiking another annoying FOO – especially wretched in hot weather, I might add – and been dealing with shortness of breath, swollen feet and aching kidneys. With bad grace and no patience, I must confess, so even I can’t stand to be around me.

The parrot has been fractious, singing in his monster voice and telling raucous unintelligible jokes to The Thing Behind The Chair. The corgi wants to rub his enormous hot flannelly ears on my knees. The little black cat has metamorphosed into a fur rug and taken over the center of my bed. I can’t seem to locate any heroism or grandeur anywhere.

I’m too tired and cranky to even read. I just can’t find a world I want to inhabit …

But I am getting a post in before midnight, even if is is basically a cranky bitch-fest. I’ll turn on the overhead fan soon and go to bed, and try to grow some discipline overnight. Then I can maybe write some world I like better.

It was always Kage’s solution.

Kage Baker greatly admired Ray Bradbury. William Shakespeare was one of the gods of her idolotry. I think most literate English speakers would class both of them as masters in their respective crafts – Sweet William in world-class plays, and dear Ray Bradbury in 20th century American literature.

It’s a good news/bad news day for these two venerable gentlemen.

First, the good news. The remains of The Curtain – which was the home base theatre for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (for whom Shakespeare wrote) between playing at The World and The Globe – long lost to history, have been found. In one of the standard exploratory digs that the UK routinely mandates before digging into the rich heritage in its soil, the theatre was uncovered behind a pub in Shoreditch, scheduled for redevelopment.  Not only will it be thoroughly investigated before the redevelopment begins, the theatre site will now become the centrepiece of the new development. Huzzah!

Kage would be dancing a fierce dance of glee over this.

Second, the bad news: Ray Bradbury has died. It’s sad but hardly a surprise – he was 91 and had remained active to the end. But, full of years that he had generously shared with the world, he passed away last night. A real literary voice, as well as one of the Masters of American science fiction, has gone to his next gig.

Kage loved him because he wrote strange beautiful stories like nothing else in science fiction. She didn’t actually care for science fiction as a kid – but Momma did, and was always pressing her favourites on Kage. Momma liked “lyric” science fiction – Bradbury, Zenna Henderson, Anne McCaffrey. She got Kage to read Bradbury by extolling his virtues as a fantasist – at the time, Kage was deep into fantasies by writers like Lord Dunsany, Saki, and C.S. Lewis. She adored the children’s books of the Narnia series, and that led her into Lewis’ Perelandra series – which was also a whole new kind of science fiction.

Bradbury showed Kage how there were only the frailest of boundaries between the flavours of speculative fiction. He wrote pretty hard, classic science fiction; he also wrote supernatural fantasy with a wonderful American atmosphere. His stories enchanted Kage, whether is was the crepuscular romance of A Medicine for Melancholy or the Martian canals brimming with the telepathic dreams of long-dead, gold-eyed lovers. And his writing showed Kage that she could write whatever she wanted, let the world label it whatever it wanted: and it would make no difference. If the story was good, it would fly.

A teenaged girl – even a nascent writer – hates admitting her mother was right. But Momma was, and Kage knew it. She retaliated by turning Momma onto Ursula LeGuin.

Like all of us, Kage cheered and marvelled at Ray Bradbury’s joyously determined longevity. She’d be very sad today, to know that he has departed – but sad because there will be no more stories from that consummate tale-teller; sad for all of us who have literally relied upon his pen our entire lives.

I hope he has gone home to the white towns of his boyhood, where the hills are green beside a free-running stream – except when they are gold with corn and orange with pumpkins. I hope he’s 12 years old again, running barefoot in the warm silky dust of a June twilight, somewhere where there are lightning bugs and cicadas and wonderful, terrible carnivals arriving in the perfumed dark.

Rest in peace, Mr. Bradbury. If that’s what you want.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not.

Kage Baker never missed an election – never, ever, ever. Four years ago, she trekked through the dark and the rain to make sure my ballot got in as well – it was arguably the most important election in our lives, and we were determined not to miss it. Since I was confined to a hospital bed, she was the hero that time.

We were raised to believe that voting was every responsible person’s obligation. Especially for women, who fought their own government (and died!) for the right. If you don’t vote, you throw away even the chance to participate in government; at least in any more civilized way that flinging Molotov cocktails.  You negate your right to bitch about the results, you lose the chance to register your own ideals and opinions, and you lose all bragging rights if your side wins. If you don’t vote, you silence yourself, before the bad guys can even threaten you!

Today are the California Primary Elections. In our house – as in Kage’s and my household before – it’s a family affair. We’ll wait until everyone is home from work and school, and then walk down together to our polling place. We’ll have a sample ballots in hand, gone over and marked. We’ll vote – all four of us now, since Michael is an adult – and I’ll get my sticker, to join the ranks adorning various bureaus and desks. It’s my way of keeping score.

It’s Mike’s first time voting in a Presidential Primary. He’s grimly determined to do his duty and exercise his rights. He’s studying to be a history teacher – he knows how much this matters.

So get out there, Dear Readers, when your own voting opportunities arise. If you’re a Californian, you know where you ought to be today! If you’ve had your primary, I hope you voted; if not, I hope you’re working up to it and staying informed. If you’re not registered: shame on you! Get out there and get registered! Speak up! Cast your vote!

I don’t even care for whom you vote. I just want the comfort of knowing that people are smart and committed enough to exercise their franchise when the time comes. Ignorance and apathy are a lot more destructive than political disagreements – I’d prefer to live in a society where responsible adults care enough to participate in their own government.

I can’t vote twice, but if I could vote in Kage’s voice, I’d do it. Because she cared.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Kage Baker was invited several times to write a blog – and once ordered to, by some cocky little prig – and she always refused. She said it was hard enough to keep up with what she had to do by working on her novels and stories all the freakin’ time; she had no way to sit about and self-indulgently talk to herself and still get things done.

Truth was, she was just very unwilling to expose herself this way. Kage got no kick at all from being blatantly visible. She had to screw her courage to the sticking point to do promotional events, and hated live interviews. She’d answer all the questions you wanted if you were willing to send them in writing – but she could barely bring herself to sit down with an interviewer and talk. She preferred to be invisible.

She maintained that she was writing fiction, not biography. Mind you, any fiction writer does pour a lot of their real life and real self into what they write – but they don’t come right out and identify it, you know?  There’s no obligation to label the ingredients of a story. Kage might do so after the fact, if it proved to be interesting to a successful tale; but she never gave the information up front. And some things she never did reveal. No more have I, nor will I even here – not if Kage ever made it plain to me she didn’t want it said.

Of course, my own reasons for writing this blog are very different than hers would have been. Even  if she had done it for the little prig who insisted she owed her readers a bigger window into to her soul than she was already providing … but I don’t write to reveal the strings (or amazing lack of them, sometimes) behind the marionettes of Kage’s imagination.

I write to say the things Kage wanted to say and ran out of time to explain. I write to share the memories of life with a truly unique person. I write to try to frame – for myself as much as anyone else – the construction of the stories I am under geas to write. And I write to keep Kage alive.

No, that’s wrong. I write because she is alive in my mind and won’t stop being so. Because she is singing a strange new harmony in my head, and I have to learn the melody she is implying. Because she still has so very much to say, and even if I were to take dictation 24/7 I wouldn’t be able to get it all down the first time. So I have to keep on trying, and writing down all I hear. When I’m late or forgetful, I get the feeling she’s writing on the inside of my skull …

So, despite the extreme narcolepsies today; despite the rising wind that has turned my sinuses to cement vats and my joints to broken glass; despite the little black cat sprawled adoringly across my desk, watching the letter dance on the computer screen and interjecting eccentric paragraph breaks; despite the parrot singing the Jeopardy theme song and the Corgi singing what sounds like Men of Harlech in Klingonese … I’m dashing off this bit for all you Dear Readers, and then running off to write down more of Kage’s ideas.

All I have to do is read them off – upside down and backwards – from my own eyelids …